


I'll Kneel But I Won't Beg

by Envoy



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Rare Pairings, Weyoun's a jealous bitch, but also hidden vulnerability, hate flirting, let the aliens be soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-08 15:03:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19871569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Envoy/pseuds/Envoy
Summary: ‘Alright. You want me to serve you, you want me grovelling at your feet, you have it.’What if Weyoun's tender little oddball side crashed into Damar's basic integrity and heart and made weird angry fireworks?





	I'll Kneel But I Won't Beg

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of love for this rarepair okay! It's my opinion that these two tools of an evil empire are both massive goofballs. Damar is a Gul not a Legate here because he's only recently been installed by Weyoun and the Dominion and hasn't got the official title yet.

\--

‘How far have you progressed with the strategic preparations for the offensive on Betazed? Damar?’ Damar closed his eyes. Appealed to the usual ghosts. Cardassia, do it for Cardassia. You represent her, you serve her, you are the only one who can now. But didn’t this wretched, obsequious Vorta believe he was serving the Founders just the same? When all he was really doing was driving Damar slowly mad with each passing day. Each of them to their own higher purpose. All of it sounded so hollow to him now. ‘Damar, I asked you a question.’

Something in him snapped. He turned, stepped forward, and dropped abruptly to his knees in front of Weyoun.

‘Alright. You want me to serve you, you want me grovelling at your feet, you have it.’ The Vorta’s look of mild shock was so vacant and detached, so damn stupid, it made him seethe with fury.

‘I want no such thing. This is very unseemly.’

He made a clumsy lunge which Weyoun looked genuinely shaken to have to sidestep.

‘What do you have in there, anyway? Do they even bother to give you any genitals when they cook you up in a tube?’

‘We are not… built for that purpose,’ Weyoun said in an eerie, dreamy voice, managing to avoid completely answering the question. Damar snorted. Of course not. Weyoun’s precious Founders were sadists, as far as he was concerned. ‘Damar…’ A single finger placed gently against his jawline tipped Damar’s face upward until he was looking up into Weyoun’s big, vivid eyes. His expression had altered, gentled – wasn’t like Damar had ever seen it. Softly, Weyoun’s hand swept a tear from the scales beneath his eye. Damar hadn’t been aware he was crying. ‘Go back to your quarters and rest.’

It was a very important day, there was a full committee review in three hours, but Damar stumbled to his feet and towards the door. At the last minute, an unpleasant thought forced him to turn around.

‘Are you… Don’t… You won’t find anyone who– ’

‘You aren’t being removed,’ Weyoun said coolly. His shoulders sagged with relief.

‘Thank you,’ he muttered. The words tasted like rancid kanar in his mouth.

\--

The next day was excruciating. He had grown so accustomed to Weyoun’s habitual scorn, they both had, he supposed, that it had ceased to feel like any threat to his position. Yes, he was usually drunk on the job, yes, he entertained women from time to time, not as often as he’d like, and Weyoun despised all of it, but that was understood. It was even expected. Despite Weyoun’s assurance the previous day, he felt that it would now be too much. He would appear to have become just too unstable to be of any use to the Dominion. The best he could hope for was more contempt, and so he left his quarters with shoulders bowed, ready to remind the Vorta of what a conveniently docile replacement to the irascible Dukat he had been to begin with. What he had not expected was this silent fascination. Weyoun had struggled to keep his eyes off Damar all morning, which was horrendous.

In the mess hall, surrounded by Jem’Hadar who had no reason to be there that Damar could fathom beyond making him feel uncomfortable, Weyoun had slipped elegantly into the seat across the table from him. As Damar shovelled down his dreary midday meal, the Vorta even leaned back appraisingly and said:

‘Dukat never proffered himself to me like that.’

His head swam. Of course, Weyoun had no one else to compare him to. A skilful ambassador he may have been, and a perceptive, diligent and learned study of diverse peoples, but it couldn’t measure up to real experience. Couldn’t change the fact that the longest interactions in his short, sorry life, were with Jem’Hadar drones and changelings. Sometimes he was strangely innocent, like a child.

‘Do you have to say it like that?’

‘But I suspect you aren’t much like Dukat, are you? No, not where it really matters.’ Leaning conspiratorially across the table as Damar ploughed through his meal with increasing nausea, the Vorta’s fascination made him apparently oblivious to Damar’s appalled response to the subject matter. When he didn’t answer promptly, Weyoun blithely continued. ‘In my opinion, Dukat didn’t object to collaboration with a superior power.’

‘That’s a lie,’ Damar hissed.

‘Is it? Hm. He was also highly conceited, really _very_ arrogant, and yet was able to work alongside me without feeling himself diminished by association, which was, at least, practical of him. You, on the other hand…’

‘I’m sorry to be such a disappointment to the Dominion,’ he spat. They both knew Weyoun was right, and they both knew how much Damar had hated Dukat’s close liaison with the Vorta from day one. Weyoun steepled his small, pale hands where they rested between them.

‘I must admit, you have taken me by surprise. Until now, I had found you basically dull. However, I find that I would very much like to know, what it meant…’

‘Keep your damn voice down, do you want the herd spreading rumours about us?’ He stabbed at his slop with the replicated eating utensil.

‘Of course, it might undermine my perceived authority to be the object of gossip,’ Weyoun thought aloud as if all this was just now dawning on him, and yet didn’t worry him in the slightest. Pitching his unctuous voice to a low stage-whisper with evident relish, he leaned in fractionally more. ‘Tell me, would any other Cardassian have acted as you did in your place? Would anyone?’

‘… No.’

‘I see, then it was aberrant behaviour, brought about by conditions of discomfort.’

‘ _Yes_.’

This information seemed to satisfy him.

After that, it was almost as if he had decided to be kind to Damar. He hardly sniped about the drinking anymore. He made sure Damar was allowed to speak his piece in front of the Founder, not that it did him any good, and then he even _listened_ to what it was Damar was saying. He could have laughed in their faces.

‘Ironic, isn’t it? I’ll have to get on my knees for you again if it makes you treat me with something like respect.’

Weyoun laughed generously.

‘Respect is a… strong word. Think of it as more like sympathy.’ He glanced curiously to Damar at his side. ‘Although, if you were offering…’

‘I was not.’ He caught Weyoun’s evasive smile in the corner of his vision and threw back a light, dry laugh, as he returned to punching coordinates into the computer panel. Under his breath, with a secret smile, he added, ‘I have other plans for tonight.’ A charming young woman from the Ba'aten Peninsula, in fact.

Weyoun bristled almost imperceptibly at his side, like an ice crystal fractalizing.

‘I think not. You are needed late tonight to make up for your tardiness over previous weeks.’

‘You can’t be serious. I haven’t heard anything about this.’

‘You do not require prior warning. You will do as the Dominion commands, whenever they command it.’ With each word, Damar watched him slide further into a silver-tongued demeanour of poise and sincerity, like a vole into a snug burrow. It only strengthened his certainty.

‘This isn’t the _Dominion_ , this is you, Vorta. I refuse to cater to your whims. You have no right to dictate my life outside of this room.’

Weyoun turned towards him with glacial slowness.

‘Do you wish to test that theory?’

He would try and stare Damar down, and Damar was expected to lose. But chagrin pushed him forward.

‘What is it you want from me?’ Close enough to see the violet tint that lay behind his ears and chased his hairline, and the fleeting pang of uncertainty pass across his face. ‘You don’t know, do you?’

‘I want your _pride_ … kept in check.’ His voice wavered but never lost its passion, ‘I-I want your cooperation in our joint enterprise, your faith, your willingness.’

With a creeping feeling across the scales at the back of his neck, he found his courage failing him after all. He had never seen eyes like a Vorta’s before meeting their Dominion ally. They burned. No Cardassian, no Bajoran, hell, no Klingon’s gaze corresponded to the supernatural dimension he found behind Weyoun’s lilac eyes, which he had told him weren’t capable of aesthetic appreciation. There was something downright spooky about them. Half-blind pools of religious devotion. Whatever he saw in those star-coloured eyes was too bright to look at for long, and he couldn’t contend with it, so he backed down. Retreating to the comfort of chain of command.

‘Alright.’ Dazed and distracted, he returned to his station and made efforts to sift through the display’s information. Not an hour had passed, making it still relatively early, before he felt Weyoun at his back.

‘You may go. Your work has been diligent. Thank you.’ It wasn’t quite an apology, but he recognised one of those instances of Weyoun’s curious lack of self-regard. His zest and eagerness for good working solutions always won out, Damar had noticed. It would be nice, in a way, to be that free of the burdens of shame and pride, the ballast that tied most people down to their past mistakes. It threw him off enough that he forgot to be annoyed at Weyoun’s superior attitude.

‘But– ’

Weyoun took a delicate step forward and inclined his head over the strategic map Damar was working on. A soft touch alighted on Damar’s shoulder.

‘Hm,’ he purred, as Damar dragged a heavy breath into his chest, pushing it outward in an unconscious show of strength even as he deferentially dropped his chin to his chest. ‘The Founder will be very pleased to see these advancements. I am personally keenly anticipating the day on which you and I can celebrate our victory together.’

The Vorta looked uncharacteristically tongue-tied for a moment. He worked his mouth as if uncertain whether to proceed.

‘I am happy that you are Cardassia’s representative to the Dominion, Damar. To me. I think… you may have been sorely underestimated as your predecessor’s second. I hope your mating rituals prove mutually enjoyable.’

Damar shuddered.

‘In the name of the Union, never say that again.’

‘As you wish.’ And with a gracious but sardonic tilt of the head, Damar’s strange alien associate left him standing there dumbly with his already prominent Cardassian ribcage puffed out.

\--

Later that evening, Gul Damar found the Vorta standing alone before the vista of the Cardassian night, peering out of a set of large windows with an elevated view of the city. A hand encircling his own narrow wrist against his back, his face so close to the window it was almost pressed against it.

‘What exactly are you looking at?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid.’ When he saw Damar’s face, he made a little amused noise in the back of his throat. ‘The stars. I’m looking at the stars. How many can you see from this observatory, do you think?’

The lack of artificial light on Cardassia meant that on a night like this with little atmospheric disturbance, the heavens were full of light. Central Command had few such windows, for the simple reason that they served no real utilitarian purpose, but the sight of the Imperial Plaza’s towering pillars rising up against the sky as the last dusty red washes of sunset faded to black brought a lump to Damar’s throat.

‘Uh, hundreds, maybe thousands. I’m not sure.’ The sight of his home planet inspired a great reverence in him, and attending this was both pride and discomfort, since he had always felt somewhat emotionally compromised by the strength of such responses. Luckily, Weyoun’s gaze was still fixed on the skies.

‘That many? I can almost see the romance in it, although I can’t quite grasp its meaning. So many species, over so many millennia, united by an appreciation of beauty. Perhaps you should bring your current woman here.’

‘I still haven’t mentioned any woman,’ he huffed wryly, staring curiously at the back of Weyoun’s shoulders.

‘How boring of me to repeat myself, I apologise.’

He almost asked if the Vorta was quite alright but knew he didn’t want the answer to that question. No matter. He would laugh with the young woman about this shortly, the ridiculous behaviour he had to put up with in the service of their people, although she would neither understand nor care, no doubt. There was no one who would. If only Dukat was still – he aborted that line of thought. Cleared his throat. Fixed his eyes on a bright point off to their left and far up above the scythe-like Plaza towers and gestured loosely towards it.

‘See that one? No? To the North West.’ His glances showed Weyoun squinting in the direction he pointed, tilting his head inquiringly. ‘By the moon.’

‘I- Oh! Aha. Yes.’

‘That’s the Arkonian primary star, but we call it _Ardwīsūr Anāhīd_.’

‘Immaculate Goddess?’ The Gul sneered in distaste at that suggestion.

‘No, that’s been garbled by these so-called universal translators. It only makes sense to Cardassians. Anyway, the best view of _Ardwīsūr Anāhīd_ is from the peak of Opuuya. If you climb to the highest point in the middle of the dry season you can see it at the centre of great meteor showers, if you aren’t suffocated by the asteroid rains.’

The image of the diminutive Vorta in Cardassian outdoor clothing stooped and struggling up a mountainside brought a haughty smile to his face. Weyoun’s own face had lit up, meanwhile, in contemplation of the heavens. You could never be certain with Weyoun, he thought, but that pure curiosity seemed genuine.

‘ _Really_? How interesting.’

‘I fail to see how anyone could remain unmoved by such a sight.’ He cleared his throat and raised his chin to stare ahead again, just as his companion turned back to him.

‘I’m afraid it would likely be wasted on me. Although, it would be curious to know. If there weren’t so many more pressing matters.’

‘Is that what you think, or what your Dominion overseers tell you?’

‘I do not appreciate the insolent tone, Damar, but there is no significant difference. As you know.’

Damar wondered idly what the shell-like curve of those strange ears would feel like under his fingers. What secrets of a distant quadrant were tucked carefully away behind this enigmatic smile.

‘I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this,’ he muttered sullenly, ‘As if you have any interest in Cardassian culture.’

‘Oh, Corat,’ he murmured in a voice that trickled, musically, like a whisper running around the walls of a cave. ‘But I am interested.’ Damar failed to hide his tremor of surprise, and Weyoun smiled contentedly. ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t know your personal name?’

Foolishly, he had thought. He would have to be more careful. And now he was unable to rid himself of the sound of Weyoun’s voice curling cloyingly around the unfamiliar shape of his own name.


End file.
